Sharing God's love as a caring faith community

James often sounds like what could be called

“Mother’s advice”,

Something anyone might remember their mother saying to them:

Like:

Be careful who you spend time with.

Watch your tongue.

Be kind to others.

When someone says something horrible one is often too shocked to know what to say. So what does the woman respond?

Does she insult him back, and tell him to go back where he came from, back to the sticks, back to the backwoods of Galilee?

Does she confront him and say “how dare you call me a dog”?

Anger, in certain circumstances, is completely justified. 

But it shouldn’t lead.

It should follow listening, and talking, and dialoguing.

I could just play it safe and hoard my privilege to myself, 

or I could make myself more vulnerable and take some risks, 

potentially take some flak by standing up a little for those people who rate lower on the privilege scale: women, LGBT, People of Colour, 

because they have to endure harassment and discrimination on a scale that I never have had to experience. 

“Their love is cemented in a covenant Jonathan makes with David- a commitment to one another in the form of a union.
This text does not require a reader to have a finely tuned gaydar to be able to see it as an example of same-sex commitment.
The emotional attachment between the two men is undeniable,
and the fact that their relationship was publicly condoned by the men in the army is significant”. (Queer Theologies, Chris Greenough, 2020)

As far as I and many other Christians are concerned, homophobia, transphobia and conversion therapy are sins.

And echoes the cries of indigenous people these days:

Do you, white folks, not care that we are perishing?

Are we, like Jesus, asleep in the boat, 

completely oblivious to the hardships that First Nations are enduring, 

since we are comfortable, curled up asleep on our cushion?

3rd Sunday after Pentecost

  Mark 4: 25-34

Today for my sermon, I’ve got a mashup for you of what’s helped me weed through the Gospel parable. It’s about:

A Mustard Seed

Helicopters 

Screen Time

Bouquets

A Mustard Seed, Really?

We start with this quaint parable of a mustard seed, the smallest of all...

Not to say that the traditional nuclear family isn’t good, 

but there shouldn’t be a hierarchy, 

but an equality amongst different forms of family. 

All kinds of family have their good, their bad and their ugly.

Perhaps we can imagine ourselves today like the exiled people of Judah and Jerusalem, 

as the pandemic dry bones.

We are dried up, sick and tired of these restrictions, 

these fears of this tiny virus spreading, locked down and fed up. 

Our bones are tired, and parched.